Practicalmadness

In November 2000, I was asked to come along as a friend and two of his classmates drove down to the waterfront at 31st Street and Lakeshore, set some stuff -- including remaindered books and old vinyl -- on fire, so that we could film the flames.

My video diary of that event (I prefer that terminology so much to 'home video') remains my strongest work as a student filmmaker -- my most topical piece with my richest imagery and best stuff happening. In fits and starts for the past two and a half years I have been trying to perfect the editing of that film, which I alternately call On Fire (its actual, finished title, on weeks when I feel good about it) or the Fire Project (the working title, for weeks when I don't).

Fire tends to be the video I use to teach myself a new editing system. The roughcut I screened in my very first DV class shortly after the shooting was how I learned Final Cut Pro -- then in a very, very incomplete version 1.0.

Last school term I resumed work on it, again to teach myself a new video system -- in this case, Media 100xe. And the cut became so much closer to what I wanted it to be, and the work continues now that I'm taking an editing aesthetics class -- my hope is to finally finish it, having found the perfect version.

Last night I imported the Media100 cut and some clips from my source tape to begin work on that final cut into (natch) Final Cut Express, and for the first time I have stills from the project:

I plan to post more information and photos from Fire as I continue work on it, as well as on all my other silly little movies. I may even make a web trailer, which I'm sure will come as thrilling news to my hosting company.

"Actual bandwidth! The horror!"